Brooke's World Book Tour!

Sometimes I use the blog to motivate myself to do things I will love, but might otherwise not accomplish due to my ability to piddle away time doing other things that I like, but don't love. 

I am officially compiling a list/wiki/database of all of the awesome places/objects relating to Books and the History of Libraries throughout the world.  Consider it a travel guide for book nerds.  When I get it up and running ( more than one entry) I will post the link on this blog.  Hopefully I'll post tidbits I learn about along the way too. 

I've wanted a "Master List" like this for some time, so I've gotten out some of my old text books, emailed some teachers, and I'm going to put it together. 

What I Am

"Librarians are centered on the human record that vast assemblage of texts, moving and still images, symbolic representations, recorded sound, and other fruits of the human mind. They select, acquire, organise, give access to, and preserve sub-sets of that human record and give advice and instruction on its use. They share core values stewardship, intellectual freedom, service, etc. and work cooperatively with other librarians locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally through such methods as inter-library lending, cataloguing standards, etc., to ensure coordination of library efforts and strive for total access to the human record. These words apply to the librarians of yesterday and tomorrow as much as to the librarians of today. They also, in my view, apply to librarians of all kinds in all countries. There is a golden thread that connects a school librarian in California to an academic librarian in Mumbai and a public librarian in Nairobi to a government librarian in Sydney."
Exciting, grand and inspiring scope part

"That being so, it follows that there are subjects in which all librarians should be educated and a core of such subjects that apply to all librarians and that should be included in the curricula of all library education programs. I have proposed elsewhere that we should work internationally on identifying that global core and work nationally and within linguistic groups to expand on that core as it applies in a particular country or grouping of countries". 
Practical, more nerdy librarian part

Michael Gorman, past president of ALA at the Forum on International Library Education

Capitalism: The Double Edged Sword of Information

As much as capitalism has helped develop nations like India (and I know it has, I've read 'The World is Flat') it holds an interesting consequence when it comes to information access. I was reading this article today about the enormous "access to information" gap in developing nations. What I mean by that specifically in this case is access to journals related to health, medicine, science, technology - you name it. Credible, reliable, researched, and peer reviewed information that, if we believe the School House Rock adage "knowledge is power" (and I truly do) must be accessible to underdeveloped nations.

Anyway, there are many organizations like HINARI and AGORA, both mentioned in the quote below, that purchase journal subscriptions from large companies in order to distribute them to developing nations for free of a very low fee. The author points out an interesting problem when "commercial interest" comes into play:

"Also, in a few countries, publishers withhold some journals because the sales of these journals are significant in these countries.

Indeed, this is the case for India, which is excluded from HINARI and AGORA even though India’s per capita GDP is less than half of US$1,000, the threshold accepted by the publishers for these programs, simply because there are many institutional subscribers in India for many journals included in HINARI and AGORA. University and research institute libraries in various regions of India also belong to different consortia who sign different licensing agreements with different publishers that allow them access to some titles that are also available through HINARI and AGORA. So offering these programs to India would substantially undercut the subscription revenue publishers currently enjoy. It appears that profit motive prevails over the principle of true equity.”

I don't really know that I have a 'solution' to this issue, because truly, we ought to be valuing information and it ought to be expensive - it changes the world (we hope). I understand why they wouldn't want to give away what they are already selling. Companies have to be able to make a profit so they can continue to collect, publish, and disseminate good products...but groups like HINARI and AGORA are willing to pay...so why not just make a little less AND help the world?

Chan, Leslie, & Costa, Sely. (2005). Participation in the global knowledge commons: Challenges and opportunities for research dissemination in developing countries. New Library World, 106(3/4), 141-163.

International Librarianship?

I just finished my semester and I'll be honest, it rocked my socks off. I had a class in Young Adult Literature and one in the History of Books and Libraries (I know - THAT'S what heaven looks like). The class about books and libraries got me so jazzed that it's something I'd like to pursue. I've been thinking about getting a second masters when I'm done with this one, and I think I'd like to do it in History and study the history of books and maybe libraries (books first, libraries second). That way I can study a broad range of time (like, all of it) and isolate one common theme - the book. Awesome? yes.

Also, one of my dear professors has taken an interest in our move to Israel and we talked on the phone about possible opportunities I might have in Jerusalem. She said that I should spend a bit of time just getting myself into the library scene. Find out what library students in Israel would do and do it (You know, like "think about what at Maverick would do and then do that"). She said ask for tours of all of the libraries and archives, familiarize yourself with the faculty at the University. She advised not to show up and say "I'm a MLIS student and I'd like an internship" (which was my original plan but now sounds dastardly arrogent), but to get my feet wet and slowly become part of the library scene in Israel. That's right, the library scene! She suggested that I take the International Librarianship class that San Jose State offers in the fall and I think I'll do just that. She suggested I join the Israel chapter and get really involved. I'm really looking forward to the library opportunities this move will offer.

And here is where all the threads meet. If I were to do a Masters in history focusing on books and libraries I have this secret plan to study at all of the Universities where we live. If we live in Syria, I could study the book/library movement in at University of Damascus, or if we live in Egpyt I could study at Cairo. Well, I wouldn't even have to study at the Universities, I could just study the movements in the areas we live in - become an expert. Every region has a book history, and since the actual history of books, language and libraries is in the Middle East I kind of think I'm in for a treat.

Teaching Technology (The Blog Lives)

Sadly, during the most exciting semester of my library career my blog suffered tremendously. I had the most to write about, and I wrote the least!

Anyway, every Thursday night I help teach blogging classes as the local library and I absolutely love it. Today was my first class back from a short break, and it's just the best way to spend an evening. There was a dear elderly woman tonight who just couldn't keep up and I sat with her throughout the class and we worked together to create her blog and make a few posts. She actually typed on one of her practice posts "I am at the library tonight. A very nice young girl is helping me". How sweet is that!?

I had forgotten how much I LOVE teaching technology. It's one of my favorite parts of being a librarian. So, I guess we'll add one more specialization to the growing lists of specializations I'd like to have... archives, special collections, public libraries in general, outreach/programming, technology..... That kind of makes me a plain old generalist doesn't it?

Medieval Manuscripts Ahoy!

These are the clamshell boxes that BYU's conservator made for the Vulgate Bible "Bibila Sacra" and the Breviary - which is a book of religious devotions, prayers, things a religoius person should do and repeat.

This was  page from the Breviary - this is all written and decorated by hand.  It's absolutely stunning.  This letter is called an Historiated Letter.  

This past week I made an appointment with a curator of the BYU special collections to go see a few manuscripts that were created in the 14th and 15th centuries.  I was a little bit nervous too ask if I, a mere mortal, could view such precious items stowed away in the BYU vaults, but I realized "Wait, I am a Masters student in library science - I have some book cred!". 

Anyway, I had an assignment for my "History of Books and Libraries" class (which is blowing my mind) to look at a manuscript prior to 1500 and discuss some things regarding it's physical description, history and context, etc. 

Max can verify that I almost cried several times.  I'm out of control, I know.  It was really an amazing thing.  I'll post more about it later (because I'm slacking on my homework right now) but here is a link to the wiki I made for my assignment. 

Brooke's Manuscript Wiki

 The Mr.  let me take pictures, which was also amazing.  I looked at "Breviary, Toledo 1400", "Polychronicon (1342)", and a Vulgate Bible from the 1300's.  

I told Max afterward that I was pretty sure I wanted to go to book conservatory school.  We'll see how that goes.  

This is the breviary with it's original binding of Moroccan leather.   Amazing.  

Dead is the New Pink

I read this paragraph in a book review for a book I was looking into today on Amazon:

Dead is the new pink. The formerly living occupy a huge amount of creative space these days -- in television ("Ghost Whisperer," "Medium"), film ("Corpse Bride," "Just Like Heaven"), novels like Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, even a highly regarded show of spirit photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

In literature I've even heard someone refer to this as a subgenre entitled "Dead-Narrator Tales". Woa. This concept is especially prevalent in YA lit and as I have a YA lit class this semester I've already read a few.

YA lit is notorious for stretching boundaries and defying limits, sometimes obnoxiously. I feel like sometimes the author's primary question is 'How can I create a story so niche oriented, so diverse in it's plot and characters, so 'off the charts' that teens everywhere will buy it and come to proms held in its honor?' (don't get me wrong, I loved Twilight and Stephanie Meyer's ascent to fame was much more innocent than I'm suggesting) I know! A paraplegic Vegan who secretly raises unicorns that have special powers over the stock market! Yeah, and she suffers from a sex addiction, but can't tell her Meth attic Mom!

This dead narrator thing, however, is a clever new twist. I think I kind of like it. But by this time next year I'm sure I'll be "so over it" as they tell me the teens say these days. Just when you think edgy YA lit topic have been tapped out (Drugs? too overdone Sex? too obvious) someone says, "What About Dead People?" Awesome.